The careful work of our editorial associates, Carolina Baffi and Lara Tucker, aided us greatly with the preparation of the manuscript.

Notes on the Poems

On repetition: Lorca's use of repetition has two sources. The first can be found in his fondness for and studious attention to old lyrical forms such as the medieval romances, or ballads, the Moorish khassidas and ghazals, and the flamenco music he heard as a child in Andalusia. The second source is rooted in his abilities as a dramatist and his penchant for highly stylized melodrama in which repetition has both structural and emotive functions. Lorca often reaches for such effects in Poet in New York by repeating certain words (ay, amor, etc.). On occasion, we have chosen to cut down on the repetition for the sake of compactness and directness, both qualities that are paramount in contemporary poetry. For example: in "King of Harlem" Lorca repeats "Negros. Negros. Negros." The repetition in Spanish calls the reader's attention to the people and to his own sense of how to name a people and community, but it can sound highly artificial and clunky in English, not unlike the sound made by a car with a flat tire. The single "Blacks" here is meant to avoid these problems by maximizing the naming and minimizing the rhetorical excess.

On Ay and Ay de mi. These are difficult to translate. Ay can be read as oh or woe and Ay de mi as woe is me. But the Spanish Ay is almost sublingual, a more heartfelt cry than the English oh and Ay de mi does not have the anachronistic or superficial theatricality of woe is me. We have left them in the Spanish to get the full sense of a situation's emotional urgency, anxiety, confusion, etc., and in deference to Lorca's masterful handling of melodrama in critical moments in the poems.

The Generation of 1927 usually refers to a group of poets who rose to prominence in the mid-late 1920s. It is so named after a symposium held in Granada celebrating the tricentennial of the death of Gongora (1627), a poet much admired by these young writers, Lorca among them, and to distinguish them from the Generation of'98, which included Unamuno, Machado, Ortega y Gasset, and other prominent writers. Occasionally the label is extended to a larger group of artists who were affiliated with the younger poets (Salvador Dali, Luis Bunuel). Lorca often refers to or quotes directly the work of his contemporaries in his poems.

Notes on the poems: Poet in New York

Carlos Morla Lynch (1885-1968) Chilean diplomat

Bebe Morla, married to Carlos 1Morla

Luis Cernuda (1902-1963) Spanish poet, "Generation of 1927"

Back from a Walk

Arbol de munones refers literally to a tree that has had all its branches sheared off so that that only the trunk can be seen. We decided to translate the phrase as "limbless tree" emphasizing the absence of branches rather than the presence of stumps, for sound and also because the word munon has no direct English equivalent.

1910

Lorca often told people he was born in 1900 (and not 1898) to suggest that he was a poet of the twentieth century. The age often represents for Lorca the end of childhood and the beginning of adulthood (like Blake's movement from innocence to experience).

Your Infancy in Menton

The translation challenge here is with the sin ti que no to entiende, literally "\vithout you that doesn't understand you," which we have translated as "fails to understand you" for Lorca's meaning and the line's music.

II. The Blacks

In the music, dance, and the living conditions of the Harlem community, Lorca senses a liveliness he empathizes with. He identifies with the apparently marginalized, those who are secretly disguised but still powerful spiritually (the king, for example) and who are known to those who know the signs.

Angel del Rio (1901-1962), Spanish writer and critic. A friend of Lorca in New York, he was a popular professor of Spanish at Columbia University.

The King of Harlem

Manzana, more commonly understood as apple, also has the meaning of street or block, with a sense of community and neighborhood.

Abandoned Church

see Jewish Cemetery

III. Streets and Dreams

Rafael Rodriguez Rapun (1912-1937), secretary and lover of Lorca; he died fighting with the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War.

Vicente Aleixandre (1898-1984), Spanish poet, "Generation of 27," Nobel Prize for Literature 1977.

Landscape of the Vomiting Crowd

Lorca visited Coney Island in December 1929, not in summer. Therefore, the scene here is an imagined one.

Murder

A display of Lorca the playwright, creating a dramatic situation based on an overheard conversation.

Birth of Christ

Translation of form by transposing form: Lorca writes here in Spanish Alexandrines, that is, fourteen-syllable lines divided by a caesura, or pause, into two hemistichs, or seven-syllable segments. Such syllabic length is nearly unmanageable in English and so we have resorted to a ten-syllable line in the translation.

IV. Poems of Lake Eden Mills

Eduardo Ugarte (1901-1955) Spanish writer and film director.

Double Poem of Lake Eden

Garcilaso de la Vega (ca 1501-1536) Spanish poet and soldier. Highly influenced by Italian literature, especially the pastoral tradition, he is considered one of the first Spanish poets to bring the humanism of the Renaissance to Spanish letters.

V. In the Farmer's Cabin

Concha Mendez (1898-1986) Spanish poet and editor, married to Manuel Altolaguirre.

Manuel Altolaguirre (1905-1959) Spanish poet and editor, "Generation of 27," married to Concha Mendez.

The Boy Stanton

Here Lorca writes about the transition between youth and adolescence (the cancer) and emerging questions of sex, love, and identity (see note on 1910).

Girl Drowned in the Well

There was no girl who drowned while Lorca was visiting Newburgh. He is incorporating a memory of a story told w;-hen he was a boy in Granada.

The translation questions in this poem were connected with the repeated clause "Que no desemboca," which we have translated using the negative participle: "Not flowing." The idea here is to suggest the well as the antithesis of the Heraklitean river, with not-so-subtle suggestions of Jorge Manrique's "Coplas": "Nuestras vidas son los rios que van a dar a la mar." (Our lives are the rivers that flow out to sea.)

VI. Introduction to Death

Rafael Sanchez Ventura (1897-1984), Spanish professor of art history.

Nocturne of the Hole

"Nocturno del hueco" has usually been translated as "Nocturne of the Void" or "Nocturne of Emptiness." By translating hueco as "hole" we are being literal and charging the English version with the sexuality Lorca intended in his original.

Landscape with Two Tombs and an Assyrian Dog

see Jewish Cemetery

Ruin

Regino Sainz de la Maza (1896-1981) Spanish musician.

We were struck by the simple and stark connection of this poem to 9/11. Here the poet begins to emerge as a kind of oracle, a role he will take on with greater intensity in the poems that follow.

Moon and Panorama of the Insects

Jose de Espronceda (1808-1842) Spanish Romantic poet.

VII.